


It Will Come Back

by stammed_cleams



Category: A Crown of Candy - Fandom, Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Headcanon, Reincarnation, Spirits, idek how to tag this one, im so basic lmao, liam-centered fic, naming a fic after a hozier song, traumatized liam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24583444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammed_cleams/pseuds/stammed_cleams
Summary: Liam knows there's something in the tent with him. His mother taught him how to find where the spirits hid, but he's never seen one like this. As he and the Rocks family are forced to hide out in a massive patch of woods to narrowly evade the forces of the Church, he becomes suspicious that the spirit is not only watching over them, it is collecting information.
Relationships: Lapin Cadbury & Liam Wilhelmina Jawbreaker, Lapin Cadbury & Theobald Gumbar (mentioned), Theobald Gumbar & Lazuli Rocks (mentioned)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	1. Something In The Tent

**Author's Note:**

> hey yall!!!!!! so, heres the deal with this fic - bear with me. it is based on a drawing by a tumblr artist that is MAD GOOD but, contextually, the art itself is....... kind of a spoiler for my fic. SO! for the time being i will just post their tumblr itself (and really theyre just a spectacular artist so u shouldn't need a specific art to follow them aright now) and THEN post the specific work i mean when its not a spoiler anymore, which should be a few chapters from now. hopefullyyyyy that is ok but i promise i will link the art when it comes up. anyway.
> 
> ATTENTION!!!!! THIS FIC WAS INSPIRED BY A WORK BY TUMBLR USER https://janchovies.tumblr.com/ (or just janchovies if ur looking it up) AND IF YOU DONT FOLLOW THEM YOUR ABILITY TO READ THIS FIC IS R E V O K E D
> 
> anyway thats it please enjoy and leave a comment :)

Liam was accustomed to seeing things in the dark. There was much in the dark to see - always, always. And it wasn’t just the mushrooms, and the seeds, and the bugs, and the creatures. His mother taught him when he was very young that there was light in every darkness.  _ “But don’t look so relieved, dear Liam,”  _ he remembered her saying,  _ “All that a light in the dark means is that something else can see you.” _

She taught him how to see them through the books of the sweetening paths. To wait for flickering smells, to pay attention to that which is in the corner of your eye, to thrive on good intentions. Only the true-eyed could see the spirits, his mother said. Those who wait for hours and watch the sky and know which clouds will come, those that plant the seed and feel the tree begin to grow beneath the ground, those that feel the strings that connected all life in Calorum. It was not enough to want to see the spirits. One had to want to see their roots and their effects - to see that, in the same way the living leave footprints in the woods, the spirits left marks for the living to see everywhere they went. One only needed to look. 

Yes, Liam was accustomed to seeing things in the dark. But he was not the same spiritual and idle-minded boy he used to be.

Liam was crying himself to sleep that night, as he had the past couple nights. The church was after them at all sides - their only hope was that the forest they were in, candy canes in all directions, was impossible to search fully. It went on and on for miles in either direction, and at the moment, they were safe. They didn’t dare light a campfire, sitting in the dark. He was in his tent now, crying himself to sleep again and thinking of Preston. Lately, crying felt more like fighting than trying not to cry - the thing in the pit of his stomach didn’t want him crying, it didn’t want him feeling anything at all, about anyone. The numbness frightened him more than the emotional tiredness did, so over and over he sliced open old wounds. Remember Preston. Remember Lapin. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. But at least crying felt like something - he’d had sparse moments of nothing in his fights, totally cold as arrows flew from his crossbow. It was sickening - he would go through anything to avoid it. 

Suddenly his breath hitched. Before his mind knew it, his body did - there was something in his tent.

He froze. His hair stood up. There was no light in here besides the streams of bluish moonlight coming in through the door of the tent. Against his instinct, he kept his eyes forward, straight at the curving fabric of the tent. The spirits lingered in the corner of your eye, and trying to look at them made them disappear - he at least remembered that from his past. He swallowed. To the right of him was a figure. It was sitting cross-legged, and there was something in its hand. A stick, of some kind - a staff, a sword. Something was wrong with its shape - what was it? A chill ran down Liam’s spine as out of the silence came the sound of soft, insectoid clicking, and hissing. The deep, earthy smell of fruit. And there was something else - even earthier, coffee maybe? No, not exactly. The sound swirled around Liam’s head, unplacable, wild and unnaturally loud and deep for the sound of a bug. He swallowed, shaking. “What are you?” he whispered. 

The spirit hissed, then disappeared into the darkness.

The next day, Ruby lost her spellbook. By 6 AM they’d turn the camp upside down to find it. Liam was still shaky from the night before, but was sure to do his part in searching, going through the food storage and through the tents, under bushes and leaves and in the holes of tree trunks. It was nowhere. 

At that point, Theobald was getting frustrated. “We need to get moving,” he said watching Jet clear leaves off of the dirt on foot after foot of ground. Ruby, with frazzled hair and her clothes half-on, was rummaging frantically through the things in her tent for the fifteenth time.

“If you guys want me to die next time we fight someone then, sure, let’s just leave without my spellbook!” she argued. 

“Well, that’s not gonna happen,” Amethar said, casting a harsh look at Theobald, “I’m sure it’s around here somewhere, those church assholes don’t know where we are, we’ll just look a little longer for it.”

Ruby was on the verge of tears, taking a moment to lean back from her search and throw up her hands. “I don’t understand, I put it in the same place  _ every night!”  _

Liam sighed. It was unwise to take the high ground - but Ruby was right. That book was mostly from Lazuli, and no member of the stubborn Rocks family would leave before it was found. Reluctantly, he climbed a tree. He looked out over the camp - the handful of tents, the places where the leaves had been scooped out of the way by Jet. And, at the head of the camp, a small, brown book. Out in the open, just beyond Theobald’s tent. He creased his eyebrows. How had they missed that? And why would Ruby put it there? He hopped down silently from the tree.

“Uh… guys… I think I… found it?” he said cautiously.

Ruby’s and Jet’s heads popped up and in unison they said, “Where?!”  
Liam pointed. All heads turned, and sure enough, they could see just what he saw. His group wasn’t stupid - they all looked confused too. 

“Oh, thank goodness,” muttered Ruby, and hurried over to get it. Liam winced as she lifted it up off the ground and swept it up under her arm without a worry.

“You just left it at the edge of camp?” asked Amethar, annoyed.

“I didn’t put it there!” Ruby argued, “I left it in my tent, I don’t know what happened!” 

Theobald cast Amethar a look. “That… could be a problem, my lord,” he said aloud, “Do you think someone was trying to steal it?”

“If they stole it, why would they bring it back?” asked Amethar.

“Maybe they just wanted to look at it!” said Jet, “They saw what they wanted to see, and then dropped it back off.”

“Mm…” thought Theobald, touching a hand to his chin, “But then why make it so obvious, why not put it in Ruby’s tent?”

“Yeah, and who the Hell could sneak in without waking us?” pointed out Amethar, “Liam, didn’t you set traps?”

Liam was gritting his teeth. “I saw a spirit last night,” he blurted. All eyes turned to him.

“You  _ what?”  _ asked Theobald.

“In my tent. Bigger than the normal ones. I think it might by spying on us, stealing things. We should all be extra careful.”

Amethar put up his hands. “Whoa, hold up. Spirits? Those are… first of all, real?” He look to Theobald, and it took Theo a moment to understand that he was waiting on  _ him  _ for an answer.

“As is my understanding,” he answered, “Though you don’t… they’re not something you can see, what do you mean you  _ saw  _ a spirit.”

Liam shook his head. “I saw it,” he said, with little elaboration, “My mom taught me how, it’s a whole thing with the sweetening path… they’re not usually that like… big and scary though.”

“What did it look like?” asked Ruby brightly.

“It was really dark, I didn’t see it well…” Liam said.

“Okay, well, Liam… I don’t want to… dismiss or disregard you in any way,” Theobald said, raising a paw, “Even if it was a spirit, we have more important things to worry about. Whatever it was, it’s given the book back, and it can’t have learned much Ruby hasn’t already shown all of Calorum with her magic in the church. I say we don’t press our luck looking for spirits and keep moving.”

The communal stance on that was that it was the best thing to do. Liam didn’t like it - he didn’t like the tone in Theo’s voice, and he didn’t like the idea of a book disappearing and then showing up halfway across the camp. He didn’t like the thing in his tent. Nevertheless, he went gloomily quiet again and set to taking down his tent. 

That night, Liam had little interest in sleeping. It felt, simply, like a bad idea. Instead, he stayed awake and looked out of the opening to his tent. From here, he could see partway into Theobald’s tent. Without a fire, it was dim, of course, but he could still see the moonlight fractalling into his red jelly skin. Liam took a good long look as he stripped his armor off, as he saw him like that so rarely. All his gold gone, he looked very  _ normal.  _ He was both impressed by his bulk and fitness even with the armor gone, and staggered by how soft and round his edges were without the ridges on the armor. How dim his colors were without the shining gold, a simple tunic falling over his skin, cape still flowing behind his back. Helmet off, one could almost forget that every word that left his mouth was in service to his king. He looked like he could have been with a job, and a wife, and children. Not a servant to the House Rocks with nothing he thought on beyond that.

It was a blow that he didn’t believe him, Liam thought, but he’d get over it. After all, spirits were a bit outrageous, and he was right, they  _ had  _ to keep moving. It would have been easier if he was on his side, though. It always was. Liam tried to put that behind him and listen, and wait. Soon, he would start talking. He talked to Lazuli every night, and had since the day he’d met him, as far as he knew. Nothing overly sappy - most of the time it was practical updates regarding how they were doing, how everything was going. Tonight, he looked tired though. As was usual for him, he took a piece of food for himself, a small piece of vanilla cake, and sprinkled some crumbs on the ground in front of him. His tradition used to be a serving for him and a serving for her - but times did not allow that. 

He began with a heavy sigh. “I always hated camping,” he said with a half smile, “Never thought I’d have to do it for this long running from the Bulbian church. As I recall, that was always more your style.”

A chill ran down Liam’s spine. Eyes locked on Theobald, he saw out of the corner of his eye a tall, dominating figure step out of the darkness of the woods and into the moonlight. Its arms were bound behind its back, and yet its staff was by its side, bauble at its top. Clicking filled the air again. Liam’s face went pale. Don’t look at it, don’t look at it. Theobald, unseeing, went on.

“Oh, we’re in it now, old friend,” he said, “I feel for Liam. Says he’s seeing spirits. Scary thing is he very well might be, I don’t know. Don’t suppose you’d wanna give me any tips on that?” He let the air be silent for a few moments. Liam clenched his teeth together as the figure looked down at its feet for a moment, something tiny scrambling up to them and then stopping. It looked back at Theobald again. The air smelled earthy. What  _ was  _ that? A nut, maybe? Walnut? No, that wasn’t it either. 

“No, you never were one to give out advice for free, were you.” He looked down at his lap. “I think of you often. I’m sure you know that already. Amethar does too, very, very badly. These children… They really could use someone like you. Smart, and full of purpose. Not to mention against the church. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but the church is not all that fond of us at the moment. Turns out Amethar once took a wife in the Dairy Islands, and never formally annulled it! Swept under the rug. It happens.” Theobald sighed. “As always, I hope you’re doing well. Wherever you are, I don’t claim to know. But… I wish you the best. And I hope you wish me the best too. I’ll be honest I could really, really use it. We’re gonna try to make our way to the Stone Candy Mountains to talk to J-”  
“ _Ambush!”_ the word had left Liam’s mouth before his mind had time to catch up with him. After a moment of considering, he fell deeper into his plan, heart racing. Before the spirit could disappear he cast out a hand and went through all the details he had on it, that smell, that silhouette, and marked it in his mind as what he would think about with no pause. His hunter’s mark - he didn’t know it worked on spirits, but sure enough, as soon as it was gone from the air he could feel the forest pulling him in the direction he needed to go to find it. Standing up out of his tent, he shouted again. _“Ambush!_ ” 

The camp leapt up. Theobald burst out of his tent with his sword in his hand, and Amethar’s tent exploded into rock candy shards as he went into a rage. Ruby had her bow pointed up into the trees, Jet had her sword drawn, and they were back to back. “Where?” Jet demanded. “Liam, where are they?”

Liam deflated. Now came the bad part. “I… I don’t know, they were just here,” he lied. But he had always been a poor liar. 

Theobald gave him an impossibly stern look. “Liam,” he said, “Did you see something?”

“I… I, yes, of course I did, of course! Or I… thought I did…”

“ _ What?!”  _ demanded Amethar.

“I’m sorry!” Liam proclaimed, tears rising in his eyes, “It- it’s dark, and I-”

Amethar turned to him fully, still bristling, and began gesturing with his hand. “Liam. We are only alive because of our ability to be silent and fast. For all you know, that shout in the woods could be the death of all of us.” 

_ We’re all going to die,  _ thought Liam, and then shook the foreign thought away. “I’m sorry,” he said seriously, “I thought I saw something, and I didn’t, I didn’t mean to!”

There was a horrible silence, judgment on the faces of the entire Rocks family. A coldness encased his body. They  _ hated  _ him. 

“Let’s just get back to sleep,” Amethar said harshly, and marched back into his hole-filled tent. 

“It’s okay Liam,” Ruby spoke up, “It is really dark out here.”

“Yeah, and maybe you were picking up on something that will happen!” Jet said, aimlessly flailing her sword, “You could be a little psychic like me.”

Theobald raised a hand. “Princesses. To your tent please.” 

They both cast him a dirty look in turn and then marched off to their respective tents. Theobald then turned to Liam. “You too, Liam,” he said.

Liam swallowed, almost unable to handle the disappointment on his face. “I really thought I saw something,” he whispered. Theobald looked down.

“Just try to get some sleep,” he said, and cruelly left it at that.


	2. The Spirit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liam refuses to be tormented by the Spirit any longer, and resolves to run into the woods alone to find it and ask it what it wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys this is the one where it takes off!!! i just want to say i am So sorry for all of my wips i............... cannot be stopped.

Liam didn’t cry that night. He didn’t have it in him.

Curled up on his side in his tent he noticed a tiny pillbug crawling through the grass and heading out under his tent. A pulse of hunter’s instinct ran through him, and he lifted the tent. More bugs. Spaced out evenly, not an unusual sight, but lined up, and leading away, in a sort of highway with bugs going back and forth along the same line. His eyes widened. The spirit was leading the army right to them. Sabotage. Thief, spy,  _ murderer!  _ Well, if it wanted them dead, then the feeling ought to be mutual, shouldn’t it. Deep, low, rumbling rage bubbled in his gut, the feeling of leaning over the abyss coming in waves as his face went stern, and emotion drained from his body like water from a tub. He left no note for them to find. He picked up his bow, slung it over his shoulder, and slipped silently out of his tent. 

The forest was dark - it was nearly a new moon tonight, with nothing more than the edge of a nail hanging in the inky night. The stars were swept up behind clouds and the red and white of the candy canes turned to eerie gray in the darkness. It was only through Liam’s skill as a hunter that he could follow the bugs in the darkness. He almost didn’t have to see them. He could hear them, he could smell them. He could  _ taste them.  _

They lead him ever onwards into the dark, to a place where the trees parted, to reveal a small clearing, about five feet wide in all directions. Thick red grass covered the ground, and the moon streamed in almost unnaturally, casting color on the candy cane trees. A clicking resonated through the clearing. One of the pillbugs crawled over Liam’s shoe to approach the middle of the clearing. There, in its center, was a tree stump with a familiar teacup placed atop it, white and pristine, and cracked on one side. There was a strange feeling here - tense, like the air was waiting for something. Liam listened. There were spirits all around him - this place was rich with them, crawling like the cockroaches around his tent. He smelled the air. Fruit and… vanilla? Black beans? Turmeric? No, no, no. He wouldn’t know until he stepped forward. He  _ had  _ to know. 

He stepped into the clearing, and the air went silent. He reached out.  _ Don’t break it this time,  _ he told himself. His hand shook as it approached the teacup, the trees whispering. And then, he touched it. Under the softest touch its porcelain frame shattered across the stump, into dozens and dozens of tiny, fragile pieces, and further into dust. Panic ran through Liam’s veins. “No, I didn’t-”

The Earth shot out below him. After a moment he was rocketing down, the clearing in between the trees serving as an elevator into the pit of the Earth. His hair rushed upward in the chilling wind as it knocked him to his knees. All around him, where there should have been rocketing up Earth and the ends of worms, elongated faces appeared in shades of brilliant pinks and purples. Not people’s faces, no. Before him were mandibles, antennae, claws, hairy legs, exoskeletal joints and sectioned fly’s eyes. Ugly hairs and twitching feelers, projected in flowing spectral images that cocked their heads at him, spiders and roaches and flies six times his height or more. They looked down on him, and real roaches began to scurry up the walls. Soon music began playing from the walls, so loud it hurt to hear. Winding, orchestral, complex. The music for a dinner hall - no, a ballet. As he kept rushing downwards he sat down, holding his hands over his head and watching the wings stretch out around him, the eyes look down at him and the buggish eyes cock their heads. A buzzing filled his head, and a splitting headache emerged. He held his head and groaned. From the ground, bugs now began to crawl up onto his shoes, towards his pants. He cried out, stomping on them by the dozen, but for each he killed, two more scurried on. 

A swarm surrounded him. He sucked in breath after breath, chest threatening to burst. It felt like someone had taken an axe to his head, and with another strike of it, he groaned again. Beneath his fear, obsession lingered, and he smelled that earthy, deep smell again. Peanuts? Pecans? No, no,  _ no! _

The walls of bug faces pulled out until he was in an ever spanning hallway made up of shades of purple and pink. The stump had dove back into the Earth with the teacup atop it, and the music had gotten so loud he could no longer think, clicking and buzzing all around it. He curled his legs into his chest, head in his hands, and felt himself rocketed through the tunnel, as if on a conveyer belt. The bug faces passed him faster than he thought possible. On the wall to his right, traveling as fast as he was (or perhaps neither were moving at all) a massive shadow emerged, coming from a light in a doorway on the opposite side he couldn’t see into. It had pointed frills of a high collar around its neck, and higher still were a set of cottony antennae. The shape of its legs were covered by the shadow of its puffed out, feathery cape to match the frills of its collar, but at its side was a familiar artifact. The staff of the spirit in the tent - Liam now saw it to be a tall lollipop, round like a tootsie pop with a stick eight feet long. A chill ran down his spine as the figure held out its staff and stretched its arms, and then two arms poked out above it, with horrific claws instead of hands at the ends of their muscular forearms. 

Liam scrambled back to the best of his ability, but the power of this place pushed him ever forward. “Oh, Bulb help me,” he whispered. It was then, and only then, now that he was drowning in it, choking on it, gagging on it could he tell the smell that was so familiar. Half of it was plum - that was the fruit, and that was no surprise. But the other half, the earthier, deeper, more natural half became known to him. He realized he hadn’t been able to place it because he’d never smelled it this refined, or this pure - the kind he’d smelled was richer with sugar, as all things stemming from Candia were. He knew that smell from the Temple of the Bulb back in Castle Candy, he knew it from the podium and he knew it from the pews. But what sooner came to memory was the smell in a different church. He remembered it from the Fructeran church in Comeda, splattered across the stained glass and the sharp, green mace of a Paladin.

It was chocolate. Rich, dark chocolate. 

The figure stepped out from the doorway. There, in the blinding pink and purple light, was a creature that stood somewhere between a man and a praying mantis. It stood on massive haunches with clawed feet, with two humanoid hands attached to it at the hip and two massive forearms ending with white claws coming from its narrow shoulders. Its face was alien, with pincers in place of a mouth and massive, moon-like eyes, caterpillar antennae stemming from its head. In its hand was a swirled pink and white tootsie pop, and it wore loose white pants and striped wrappings around its feet and waist. Bound by a swirled pink and red mint was a massive, purple feather cape that fell to its feet and rose up above the crown of its head. Its carapace was a cool, medium brown. At its feet was a pillbug the size of a small dog, curled around its ankle almost protectively. The pillbug got one look at Liam, and, without a second of hesitation, bolted in his direction. 

Liam scrambled back, fully hyperventilating at this point. He had just enough sense to draw his crossbow and try and shoot an arrow, wildly missing the tiny, dodging bug as it leapt right at him. By the time it was a few feet away he let his bow fall to the ground and lifted his hands to cover his face. This was it, it was over. He’d meddled too much with the spirits and now it was the end for him… no doubt this…  _ thing,  _ this  _ creature  _ was here to punish him for letting Lapin die. The message was clear enough - it was his end, and he deserved it.

But after several seconds of waiting, he found that there was no feeling of pain. There was a feeling though - it was one of a smooth bug shell and a warm underbelly pressed against his elbow. Shaking, he opened his eyes to find the pillbug curled up to the best of its ability in Liam’s arm in its protective position. It was rolled into a neat little ball, clicking every once in a while and rocking back and forth. 

Face pale, Liam looked to the menacing figure walking towards him through the hall of spirits. It spoke in a droning voice, resonating with the buzzing of flies. “You will have to forgive me for bringing you here,” said the voice, and Liam’s jaw fell with the memory of that droning tone. The smell of chocolate, the lollipop staff. It was  _ him.  _ It gestured to the pillbug. “Preston refused to stop whining until I brought you here and spoke to you myself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AYYYYYY i know i never do end notes but I CAN ATTACH THE ART NOW!!! this is what spirit mantis lapin looks like: https://janchovies.tumblr.com/post/618379362603089920/me-slamming-fists-on-table-lapantis 
> 
> Once again, if you havent followed janchovies on tumblr, go do that. please. ok, stop by again soon, bye.


End file.
